


Looking For A Manger

by diopan



Category: JoJo no Kimyouna Bouken | JoJo's Bizarre Adventure
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-24
Updated: 2013-08-24
Packaged: 2017-12-24 11:54:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/939715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/diopan/pseuds/diopan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Caesar's life after the events of Battle Tendency.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Looking For A Manger

it’s nice to know  
the things you lost were real

Long heavy curtains dragged with effort are opened by small hands, and late September early morning sunlight floods the room, blinds his eyes. No, he wishes to say, no more, but there’s a fight, a hunger inside he needs to satiate, and it’s not for me, he thinks, this time it’s not for me.

“Papà?” childish southern accent, like his brother in dreams he’s too tired to fight back. Wonder where he is right now. Hopefully safe, hopefully still in touch with the others, his sisters, his brothers. This is for them too, but it isn’t, is it? It’s for them, no, it’s not for them. If he makes it out of this, if he does, when he does he’ll seek them out, because humans will still be waging a war, and if he makes it out of this, when he does, then he’ll be able to do it for them, too.

“Papà, la mamma dice che la colazione è pronta!”

Now he’s awake, eyes wide open. Like waves caressing the shore, like the wind blowing in from the Adriatic every morning through the window on an island that might have not existed, it comes to him. It happens more often nowadays, getting lost. They call it old age, and if he was so inclined, he’d call it nostalgia. But his sentimental act was just that, he never really believed it himself, except for the times when he did and had to mock himself out of the dream. Piero, the youngest of his children, ten years old, stands just besides the door, says “Papà” one more time, dragging the last syllable like he used to do at that age. Takes after his mother this one; no strange marks under his eyes, auburn hair and playful, almost insolent disposition.

“Tell your mother I’ll be right there.” His left hand scratches blonde hair that’s slowly greyed in front. He started shaving two years ago because traces of borrowed vanity had seeped in to make him hate silver facial hair and old tired expressions. Incorporate the lighthearted criticism of some obnoxious shadow into your everyday tasks, and games become habits and habits become religion. Facial hair doesn’t suit him anyway, he convinces himself. There’s no need to blend in, he already earned a place with his old man, and his old man, through actions and life and missed chances.

“Hurry up or we’ll leave without you,” the child says slamming the door, almost insolent.

-

The car is already running when he steps out onto the driveway; children in the back seat laugh at him for some reason. Except the eldest, never the eldest. This year she is older than his friend ever was, he notes as her worried face urges him to pick up his pace. She’s probably defending him as she usually does: “Don’t bother my dad. Be more respectful, Piero! Don’t laugh, mamma!” She always says “my dad” too, unlike the others, unintentionally probably. She’s too much like himself, he knows, and sometimes he wonders if she would’ve liked that man or if she would’ve pretended to hate him, too.

On the front seat, auburn hair—copper sometimes; she is old after all—and green eyes, her gloved hand grips the steering wheel and she stares ahead with a wide smile. She’s a good driver, loves to drive. That’s why he fell for her, the year before the armistice: she wouldn’t accept the jewel, said she’d rather they drive around all night, try to get lost. It’s a shame, he thought, he’d never gotten lost in his own city before, still he tried his best. Her hand felt the wind and she asked him why he hadn’t participated, all the other men had so why was he still around. The window was closed before he answered. He didn’t know he had it in him, and he almost surprised himself when his voice said he’d already done his part in the war, already died many times for it. She never told him why she believed this, but she did. They didn’t get lost, in the end, but she stayed anyway. The dress looked beautiful on her, he thought when she walked towards him. Even Lisa Lisa cried during the ceremony: he spotted her hands fumble for her sunglasses buried deep in a purse too large for the night. His old master wasn’t one to cry at such events—the church was beautiful and destroyed but not enough to ellicit tears from that woman—she was crying over something else, he knew, so he cried too. That was the last time.

“We were really going to leave without you, you know?” her voice almost silenced by the engine.

“I thought you hated going there.” It’s a long drive. She never met him.

“Autumn doesn’t really start if we don’t go. Habits are hard to shake, huh?”

The car takes off—like silk, the seller said, and he let him say it, because why not; the seller probably didn’t know how much a car could be like silk—and he leans back after she squeezes his hand tightly, just once, then lets go.

-

Familiar forms rise as the car descends into the city, hours later, and new, unfamiliar shapes among those remind him it’s been too long—an entire year—but he doesn’t know if he could take any more than this. He clears his throat and one of his girls—Flavia, like his wife’s mother—hugs him and the back of his seat as if she knew some sorrow was stuck in his neck, near his heart. Her hands on his feel warm, and soft, and she whispers “Ti amo, Papà” like he used to whisper “Ti amo, Flavia” when she was still afraid of the dark and wouldn’t let him leave for his room. Magic tricks—holding water in an upturned glass, holding water around a finger, making wine paint butterflies on cloth when the glass was spilled—made the children laugh when he performed them before their bedtime so they wouldn’t fret, and most of the time it wasn’t even a sad affair.

“We’re almost here,” he says, “who wants to choose the flowers this time?”

Flavia, Giulio and Piero talk over each other, too loud, too noisy, while Raffa smiles at him, and he lets their voices silence another noisy child, a brat, until the honour is bestowed on Giulio, who runs out of the car once it comes to a stop, Raffaella follows closely behind, because the faster he gets to the florist the better the flowers he’ll choose.

They enter in silence, his wife holds his hand, Giulio carries a large bouquet of daffodils and azaleas, and the youngest a single sunflower his eldest sister bought. In the distance, the sillhoutte of an innocent young maid with flowers in her headpiece dissolves into a grown woman standing with her hands tied together. Perhaps she prays, she was a Catholic. Perhaps she still is. She’s been there through all these years: sometimes her husband comes, places a hand on her shoulders with care and comfort for causes unknown; sometimes he doesn’t. She always leaves as he arrives, and nods from afar, a secret sign for the two of them to share, a fleeting moment. He waves at her, nods slowly, and watches her leave, her skirt floating around her even now, as if not a day has gone by. They both understand; he’s never talked to her, not since then, and she’s never tried to either, but they understand. “No” was her reply the time he asked her on a date, out of curiosity—“It’s because you’re pathetic, Caesar, who’d want to go out with you?” said in strangely tender tones. He wished to reply, he was close to replying, but it wouldn’t have made a difference: it was impractical, and practicality was second nature for him, for a while, at least until he made it out of there but when he did… When he did practicality was the only thing holding him together through the day. Maybe Jojo was right—I really was pathetic—because after all these years, there she was, again. But there he was as well. Flavia asked about the woman maybe five, six years ago, and he replied: “She loved him, I think. She was my friend, once, too,” but his little girl didn’t ask anymore, neither did his wife, and there really was nothing more to say.

The eldest, Raffa, keeps a solemn face through out the day, enough for him to imagine she wove a story to explain her yearly absences on this day when she was still in school. A fallen companion, a young soldier giving up his life to save enemy comrades as the nightsky exploded in sounds not unlike those of fireworks; a story not entirely fabricated where he, both of them, are more dramatic, a lot more noble—a tale of war in which enemies become humans. But he can’t help feel she would never do the truth justice, even if she knew what the truth was. None of them do; he’s made a practice of vagueness: some man long ago, English, and tall, and buried on a grave from which he’s eternally watching over the island. Old friend, he’d say, but the words become stuck in his throat and he laughs. It was too long ago, the man might not even have existed.

He stands in the same spot he’s stood every year, a little disappointed for, once more, he didn’t get to clean the place, but that’s always been her task, the one she quietly assigned herself because she lives close by and comes earlier; it’s her duty, he knows. His family surround him and they stare. Later he will wonder what they all think, or if they try to talk to the man in the grave, but right now he does his best to silently explain all the things that have changed in the last year, all the good news, and the bad, and everything in between, without raising his voice or moving his lips. “Happy birthday,” he says finally, and “we’re old, too old,” and “Giulio chose them, but I think you liked these ones, and if you didn’t, you should still be grateful, don’t be an idiot.”

-

They have lunch at the same restaurant year after year, but it’s a different one from that time. The one in his memories was destroyed at some point between the end of his war and the end of the other one. It was too poor already, at that stage, the restaurant, and the city, and the country. He passed by the city some day and it no longer stood. It's better like this. Some time ago, an eternity, he’d sat on a chair with his back against the wall and the old friend in front of him had said “When this is over, let’s come here again. I have things to say,” or maybe it was: “When it’s all over, let’s come here. I want to try that dish.” It’s better this way, he thought the first time his wife went with him. They had married earlier that year, and he leaned over to wipe her lips, stained black with ink.

-

There was some movie playing that evening, hours before he sat with his back against a wall which no longer stood. Jojo wanted to see it, so he went along when asked, because he always did once protests ran out. The mask on his face made others stare but Jojo didn’t mind, his gaze fixed on the screen, immersed in fiction; it was almost as if nothing was about to be lost, as if they weren’t gambling their lives—his life—on a bet they weren’t sure to win. It was his fault that Caesar couldn’t remember what movie it was. It must’ve been American. Were they even showing American movies back then? Maybe it was German. Maybe it was old, and Italian. There was a football match that day, too, but Jojo never cared for football, and the fate of the world, the fate of this man, seemed more important than what the score would be, back then.

“So, it was all a dream?” Jojo’s confusion showed in expressive eyebrows. It wasn’t, as Caesar had first thought, some way of coping with the mask hiding half of his face, but rather a natural disposition to theatricality.

“Yeah, it was all a dream.”

“Well, that’s stupid. Dreams are stupid. What’s the point?”

“It shows what could have been.”

“That’s stupid. Why don’t they have it happen, then? It makes no sense,” he rearranged the scarf—Caesar could be sure it belonged to Lisa Lisa and he always wondered why she let him have it; he always wondered until he knew.

“It’s a technique, that’s why they can’t have it happen, it would defeat the point.”

“I think there’s no point to it anyway.”

“Just because you can’t understand it doesn’t mean it’s stupid, idiota. I liked it.”

“Of course you liked it, you like bubbles, you’re horrible. Whatever, I’ll buy you dinner if you shut up.”

Usually, at least for a month, Jojo wore the mask without exception, but he treated Caesar to lunch, or coffee, or pastries, and dinner that night, and watched the other man eat, complained loudly about his mask, about his friend’s selfishness. Caesar would leave something on the plate, most of it, pretend he was full, and ask the waiter for a bag to take the leftovers home. “Per il mio cane,” he’d say, but Jojo couldn’t know, his italian was lacking, and the mindless canine smile on his eyes was enough to make it all worthwhile. That night, because Jojo said he wanted to come again once it was all over and eat the dish on his own, Caesar ate all of it. That, there, was another reason to survive. He only asked to take home his dessert, and Jojo’s smile was different, full of thought.

-

When the last rays of sunlight streak the horizon, after his famly and him have walked around streets he didn’t walk with another man, Caesar takes the driver’s seat himself, undoes the road they came in on, and witnesses all the passengers in his car gradually falling asleep; just the road, and some other cars, keep him company now. There’s peace for him; the journey back is like a long held breath, a spring unwinding after being too long, too tightly shut, and the sorrow in his neck dissipates an inch or two. Some years back, the only fight he ever had with his eldest daughter was resolved while returning on the same road; tensions that lasted for months gave way, relief washed over him when she understood, when he understood, and her smile—so sincere and young and hers—was reflected in the mirror to define new happiness. As a young man, he had a dream and now it’s come true in the shape of five people sleeping in the car while he drives out of Venice, quietly, silently, and there’s peace for him, too, sometimes. He likes it, he knows he does, it’s all he ever wished for, everything he needed out of life. Raffa will marry a silent man one day and grandchildren will come, sit on his lap, hear fantastic tales of youth and call him a liar, but enjoy the stories nontheless. His wife, beautiful and playful, almost insolent, will laugh at him too, let him have a taste of raw dough she plans on turning into cookies, or cake, and his daughters will scold him, scold their mother for spoiling the old man. He loves it, he knows he does, and yet he still says no, no more, and his eyes fixed on the road straight ahead open wide. Now he’s awake.

-

He could’ve waited, he could’ve listened to Jojo’s words—he always did anyway—he could’ve remembered whispered pleas the mask didn’t muffle during a boat trip back to Saplena after watching a movie he had forgotten already. “I’m your family, too, now. Aren’t I?” Pleas he pretended to be deaf to, that had hurt like ointment on a wound. But he couldn’t wait, and he couldn’t listen, because he knew, somehow, he knew of the two there would only be one. He wasn’t a man to contest how he did know—he’d witnessed immortal men tear through flesh like paper, witnessed stone absorb the living, a man who’d become a robot or a robot become a man; there was no longer room for skepticism in his practicality—and for that he charged, because the fight wasn’t for himself; it wasn’t for his brothers and sisters or his lineage or his master or the family he would never meet, it wasn’t even for the sake of the world, not anymore. Because there’s no point to a world where you’ve left.


End file.
